Casting the Chorus

Chorus is normally an affair of doubling. Gower can usually, not always, look forward to an unshared part; Chorus in Henry V , always. But all other Shakespearean choruses and prologues are luxury castings for individual actors, which depend upon spacious production values. Certainly in Shakespeare’s day, and very generally since, the actor playing chorus will have had to combine it with at least one other part. This double will be visible, so to speak; the actor does not disguise himself as chorus; there is a transference of playing values, and the identity of the linked part has at least the possibility of inflecting chorus. We ought to know chorus’s subterranean partner, his stage sibling, and draw whatever conclusions we can. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.